Don't just cancel journals: Mandate deposit

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 01:02:44 +0000

On 31-Oct-07, at 7:35 AM, N. Miradon wrote:

> Interesting thread is now running on the Taxacom Discussion List.
> Max Planck
> Society has cancelled their subscriptions to 1,200 journals
> published by
> Springer.
>
> See http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom/2007-October/
> 026230.html et seq.

The Max Planck Society would do incomparably more for Open Access
(and its own research impact) if it mandated deposit in its own
Institutional Repository (IR), Edoc, rather than just canceling
journal subscriptions.

http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3061.html

For some time now, the reply from the MP Institutes and German
universities has been: "We cannot mandate!"

But of course they can! The policy need not be coercive; it need not
have sanctions for noncompliance. It need merely be officially
adopted. And there are obvious and simple administrative ways to make
it worth researchers' while to comply (if the enhanced research
impact that OA vouchsafes is not enough): Simply declare the IR as
the official institutional submission format for all performance
review for its employees!

So there are no administrative barriers. Nor are there any legal
barriers: For performance review, it is sufficient to deposit the
final, revised, refereed, accepted draft -- the postprint --
immediately upon acceptance for publication, and set access the
postprint full-text as Closed Access (administrative access -- with
only the bibliographic metadata, not the postprint, visible webwide)
rather than immediate Open Access (if the journal in which the
article is published is non-Green and demands an embargo).

http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html

(Since the only thing that has been standing between us and 100% OA
for years now is *keystrokes*, an administrative keystroke mandate is
all that is needed. The increasingly palpable benefits of OA itself
will take care of the rest, as carrots, rather than sticks.)

http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html

Stevan Harnad
AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-
Forum.html
     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/

UNIVERSITIES and RESEARCH FUNDERS:
If you have adopted or plan to adopt a policy of providing Open Access
to your own research article output, please describe your policy at:
     http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
     http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
     http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html

OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY:
     BOAI-1 ("Green"): Publish your article in a suitable toll-access
journal
     http://romeo.eprints.org/
OR
     BOAI-2 ("Gold"): Publish your article in an open-access journal
if/when
     a suitable one exists.
     http://www.doaj.org/
AND
     in BOTH cases self-archive a supplementary version of your article
     in your own institutional repository.
     http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
     http://archives.eprints.org/
     http://openaccess.eprints.org/
Received on Thu Nov 01 2007 - 01:36:15 GMT

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